


Untitled

by Scribe



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-31
Updated: 2009-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:27:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/pseuds/Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Geoffrey is slightly insane and Darren is unexpectedly useful. Written as a gift for Raven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled

Geoffrey hates Darren Nichols. He does. Loathes him, detests him, thinks he embodies every damn thing that can make Geoffrey regret his interest in theater and will probably be responsible for bringing the entire art form and its noble history crashing down into ruins. Ruins with lots of explosives, and probably some animal dung.

It's just that Darren can do something no one else can. He can sort of...blot Geoffrey out. Not obliterate him completely, but he has the unique ability of making the weight of _being Geoffrey_ disappear for a little while, of making Geoffrey himself just another person. It's not necessarily about Darren's self-absorption or arrogance; Oliver has those two qualities in abundance and Geoffrey want to escape himself around Oliver more than around almost anyone else. Scratch that, more than around anyone else, period. But Oliver's Oliver-ness builds itself off everyone around him, pulling them in and projecting onto them and keeping them close. Darren's Darren-ness takes up so much space in a room that there just isn't much left over for Geoffrey-ness (or for anyone-else-at-all-ness, really) and that can, occasionally, be very nice.

For example, there's a day during Lear where everything is sliding toward disaster. Rehearsal's been cancelled because of Charles- again- and Geoffrey goes out for lunch because otherwise he's just going to sit around the theater all day and he'll be damned if he gets to the point where he's so bored he's actually hoping that Oliver will show up. Outside, it's raining. No Shakespearian elemental storm, but a cold, steady, drenching that drips off everything and runs in thin, sheeting rivulets over a ground too cold to absorb it.

It speaks to him.

Not in a flowery, artistic sense, no, in a congratulations you're completely off your rocker sense. The rain has a multitude of voices that slide in and out of his head like conversations in a dream, leaving behind vague feelings and no notion of actual words beyond the certainty of having heard them. He doesn't know how long he stands there, straining to catch them, straining to shut them out.

He goes back inside and feels even more wet and bedraggled for the contrast. Darren's in rehearsal and he doesn't feel at all guilty for interrupting, given that what they're working on probably fits better under the category of circus than of theater. He unceremoniously pulls Darren aside and says,

"I hear voices in the rain."

Ellen would be exasperated, would hiss at him not to _say_ things like that or ask if he knew how crazy he looked, standing there dripping. Oliver would have some not very funny quip like, you've been arguing with a dead man all week and you're worried about the rain? About time you came to grips with your insanity, don't you think? Anna would ask if he was okay, if she could do anything for him, and would stare after him with that wide-eyed worried look all the way down the hall.

Darren, though. Darren says, not particularly cruelly, but offhandedly, with that ever-present undertone of melodrama that he hates so much,

"Geoffrey. I am in the middle of constructing a work of art which will leave the whole country openmouthed in amazement. At present I am rehearsing- the concept must be familiar to you- and I would greatly appreciate it if you would take your paranoid delusions and fuck off."

Geoffrey, grinning, does.


End file.
